1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to management and control of resources in a computing system. More particularly, the invention concerns defining a policy, or providing real-time feedback regarding the effect of applying a policy used for management in a computing system.
2. Description of Related Art
Modern computing systems frequently include a large number of computing devices, storage devices, and other components. Management programs may be used to manage these computing environments. Some management products offer policy-based schemes for managing different entities in computing systems, such as security settings for a large user base, or storage resources throughout an enterprise. The policies may be, for example, simple rules, or complex, hierarchical, inheritance policies.
Storage resource manager (SRM) software is often used to manage entities in computing systems. For example, IBM Tivoli Storage Resource Manager (ITSRM) may be used to manage storage resources. SRM software facilitates management of storage resources throughout an enterprise by centrally monitoring storage assets and their utilization, by reporting events, and by allocating storage based on pre-defined policies. As an example, a SRM may provide automatic, policy-based provisioning of storage resources for host computer systems in an enterprise in order to satisfy criteria for each machine such as free space or capacity.
Although policy-based products are widely used, they are often difficult to use to their full advantage because they do not provide a “preview” to show an administrator the effect that potential new or changed policies will have upon the entities managed by those policies. Because of this limitation, it is difficult for a policy administrator to conduct various “what-if” scenarios that may be necessary for implementing a successful policy. Due to the absence of real-time feedback, administrators are forced to either attempt to manually run through all of the possible scenarios, or to follow a “try-it-and-see” method where they implement a “best guess” policy and test it out to see what it actually does. Such approaches to managing policies are often labor intensive, error-prone, and unpredictable.